


To Break an Arm

by The_Potatoe



Category: To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Genre: Set post-book, past character injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-23 21:43:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8343946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Potatoe/pseuds/The_Potatoe
Summary: Scout and Jem look back on the events leading up to Jem breaking his arm.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This book deserves more fics. I wanted to write one and somehow this happened? *shrugs*  
> Written in Scouts POV

Years after meeting him, I often found myself thinking about Boo Radley. After parting ways with him on the front porch of the Radley Place I am yet to see him again. I don't think I'll ever see him again. I often find myself on the front porch, looking out at the Radley Place from my seat.

It was from a similar position that I watched Atticus wield a gun and shoot Time Johnson, the 'pet of Maycomb' as he was known to the children of the County. It was from this spot I saw Miss Maudie's old house eaten by flames that licked the sky. It is at this spot that I sit and think and contemplate my meeting with Boo and the events leading up to it. 

I am able to recall that night with great clarity, my memory of that time unaffected by fear and untouched by time. The memory, instead of becoming dulled after so many years, remains clear in my mind, fresh and crisp like the scent of newly cut grass. A scent made familiar to me after years of living in the same neighbourhood as Miss Maudie.

The night had begun innocently, clueless about the events that were to unfold beneath the blanket of darkness. I remember the mortification I felt at my blunder at the pageant, how it melted away in the face of strange noises and a chilling game of cat and mouse. The confusion and disorientation when Bob attacked Jem and me. Boo, taking Jem to safety. 

The story the County was fed was a simple tale that was relatively true. People occasionally still speak of the drunken attack on two children in the middle of the night, during which Robert E. Lee Ewell fell on the knife he had attempted to use on the two children, and died. Miss Stephanie Crawford never found out the true events of that night, so the truth remained hidden from the rest of the County.

Jem's arm never fully recovered, his elbow remaining at an odd angle. In my early youth I had a near-morbid fascination with his arm, poking and prodding at it once it was healed and driving Jem up a wall. Even while his arm was injured, he continued his work as a diligent water boy for the football team. After it had healed, he was incredibly relieved when he learnt that he would be able to play football.

"Scout, what are you doing?" Jems question breaks me from my reverie. Much to Aunt Alexandra's joy, both Jem and myself have improved our manner of speaking and now speak like "the true gentleman and lady the two of you are," as she put it. 

"Nothing much." I look back out at the empty street before us. 

"I think you're still thinking about what happened that night." Jem says as he sits down beside me. I'm only slightly surprised he read me so well. I hum in response, neither a confirmation nor a denial. "You can't go blaming anyone for what happened, Scout," says Jem.

"I can tell you who started it," I reply coolly, long past the days of impatience and quick anger.

"It wasn't the Ewells." He read my mind again.

"I still think it was," I say, "they started it all."

We've had this same argument a few times already and I continue to maintain that the the Ewells started the chain of events leading up to Jem breaking his arm. This time, however, Jem takes it further.

"It started long before that." 

"When did it, then?"

"It began," Jem said, now using what I had long ago dubbed his 'lawyer voice', "the summer Dill came to us, when he first gave us the idea of making Boo come out." In response, I raise a brow at him. He looked back at me, confident in his case. I take a moment to think before responding.

"Well if you want to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson." Jem tells me to continue, so I do. "If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama" I get distracted, beginning to get lost in my thoughts "...and where would we be if he hadn't?"

Jem smiles a small, amused smile at my musing. We sit quietly for another few moments and from inside Calpurnia calls out to us, telling us to come back inside soon before it gets dark. Jem calls out to her, giving an answer in the affirmative. 

We're both too old to settle anything with a fist-fight, so we decide to go to the best option to resolve our argument; our father. After we both take our turns testifying, Atticus said we were both right, and that its best to leave it at that. So we did.

Jem returns to his room, no doubt to bury his nose in another of his old law books. I go back to my place on the porch, leaving our father to go back to what he was reading before our interruption, a novel by the name of 'And Then There Were None'.

Calpurnia tells me off for going back outside. I rise, smiling sheepishly as I slowly walk back inside, closing screen door behind me.


End file.
